Mozart | MEMETERIA

April 13, 2015 • 11:06 am Comments Off on Mozart’s Piano Concertos as Self-Portrait

Mozart’s Piano Concertos as Self-Portrait

Portrait of Mozart by Joseph Lange

Here’s a recent essay I wrote for the Boston Symphony on Mozart’s Vienna piano concertos:

Though Mozart is credited with elevating the genre of the solo concerto to its lofty status, varying concepts of the concerto would predominate in later times — with the virtuosity that contributes only one layer in Mozart’s mature concertos later taking on an inflated significance in the heyday of Romanticism, for example. Such relatively superficial associations would in turn dampen interest in Mozart’s own concerto legacy. The piano concertos now guaranteed to attract listeners were for a long time largely neglected, and only came back into favor in the period approaching the composer’s bicentennial…

continue reading [starts on p. 2 of the pdf]

Filed under: essay, Mozart

February 25, 2015 • 9:59 pm Comments Off on Dot Matrix Mozart

Dot Matrix Mozart

Filed under: Mozart, technology

October 27, 2014 • 9:43 am Comments Off on The Rake’s Revels: Don Giovanni Parties It Up in Seattle

The Rake’s Revels: Don Giovanni Parties It Up in Seattle

Photo (c) Elise Bakketun

Here’s my Bachtrack review of the current Don Giovanni revival in Seattle:

Mozart’s drama about the legendary rake’s egress launches the first season under Seattle Opera’s new general director, Aidan Lang. However, the production originated here in 2007, and the current revival had of course been scheduled well in advance. In other words, it makes no statement about the new Lang era but is instead a reverberation of the Speight Jenkins years.

This production mines the comic possibilities inherent in the essentially picaresque, stop-start narrative pieced together by Da Ponte. The Overture, with its apocalyptic opening section introducing a cheerful, buffa main course, has always posed a musical conundrum, the solution to which, as in Tristan und Isolde, remains deferred until the end of the opera. Yet in Seattle’s McCaw Hall, those foreboding first chords have the effect rather of parentheses, of a statement that’s easily shunted aside until the topic comes up again, in rather nonsequitur fashion, during the grand finale.

continue reading

Filed under: Mozart, review, Seattle Opera

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